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David Smith

@avaragado.org
107 followers 101 following 640 posts

Creative techie gay in Cambridge UK. Solution Architect/Technical Product Designer/Writer/Leader (looking for work). avaragado everywhere. Writes fiction as @anthonycamber.com 🏳️‍🌈

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Reposted by David Smith
Robert Saunders @robertsaunders.bsky.social · 10h
It’s a mark of the corruption of our whole way of thinking about the world that trying to meet a planetary emergency is routinely described as “ideological”, while continuing to accelerate it is presented as “pragmatic” and “economic”.
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David Smith @avaragado.org · 8h
Inappropriate precision is my favourite subgenre of journalism
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David Smith @avaragado.org · 27/09/2026
Ah yes, such weighty questions as “Who should we believe, you or Nigel Farage?” and “Will you raise taxes?”
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Gabby HC @scriblit.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
The British Opinion Columnists make sense when you realise they're a clique of Year 10 girls who've all decided to call Kelly From Maths a bitch and a crybaby and a virgin and a slag until she leaves school (one way or the other), except they're 55.
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David Smith @avaragado.org · 26/09/2026
There was a time when this would've been a major story. Now it's the kind of thing that barely gets noticed. www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/...
bbc.co.uk
How we know this is an altered photo Trump posted with Xi
President Trump posted an image of himself welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping that appeared different from other images taken at the event. BBC Verify compared the post with verified images from...
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Reposted by David Smith
JW Mason @jwmason.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
This is the master key to deciphering contemporary debates about free speech. www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/se...
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James Grimmelmann @jtlg.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Congratulations to Meta, I guess, on failing to take reasonable measures to protect its trade secrets, and on authorizing extensive access to a protected computer.
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Caræsten 🇵🇸 @cara.city · 24/09/2026
guys please stop falling for this, this is not “rogue AI” it’s “environments with lax cybersecurity controls”
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David Smith @avaragado.org · 24/09/2026
Roddo Spode latest www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Daniel Thomas arrested over video of dinghy slashing
Police had been looking into footage appearing to show the man, also known as Danny Tommo, slashing at a boat in the English Channel with a knife.
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Reposted by David Smith
SMD @anothersmd.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The whole "small boats" issue is a problem created out of thin air by successive right wing governments and amplified by a racist media who don't want a single brown person in this country. It's so simple it fits in one post and I can add this sentence too.
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James Austin @jamesdaustin.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
And what did he do on that livestream, huh, BBC? What did he do?
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Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
literally thousands of jobs in higher education were cut *last year alone* and there's been almost no media coverage and no government action
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Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I mean, any time now would be good. If it's not too much trouble
Headline: "‘Outright racist’ Daniel Thomas will face full force of law over any crimes, says home secretary"
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David Smith @avaragado.org · 22/09/2026
The very beginning?
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History and Heritage Yorkshire @handhyorkshire.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Laura Kuenssberg's question at the weekend "Is it for people who are singers, songwriters, artists to be taking public positions on very very controversial, difficult, complicated issues" was the most insulting, patronising, appalling question I have had the misfortune to have heard in years.
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Ste Jormur @stejormur.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
I'd never seen this Roy Lichtenstein painting before, but it's incredible how he manages unfailingly to make his copies worse than the original comics he's ripping off.
A drab pop art painting of a sinister man driving a car, watching a stoic blonde in leopard print fur. The proportions of the guy's face are offThe original image, from Girls' Romances 78 by Tony Abruzzo. The guy has a more sinister leer, while the woman has heavier mascara and feels both sadder and more determined. A caption reads "I vowed to myself I would NOT miss my appointment -- that I would NOT go riding with him--yet before I knew it..."
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David Smith @avaragado.org · 20/09/2026
Just saw one of those all-in-black masked teens slouching towards McDonald's. What are we calling them? Tweenjas? Winjas? Bruce Wee?
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Stephen Collins @stephencollins.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

1
Wide shot of the BRITISH MUSEUM. There are suggestions of fascism around the streets - tanks, barricades, an Orwellian 'Big Brother'-style poster on a wall. A voice of a TOUR GUIDE emanates from the museum:

TOUR GUIDE:
So the Tapestry tells acrucial chapter of our nation's history...

2 
[Cut to interior of museum. A long Bayeaux-style TAPESTRY is on display, and the Tour Guide is speaking to a tour group]

TOUR GUIDE [smiling]:
How modern fascist Britain was created. 

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TOUR GUIDE:
The Tapestry begins here with the 2008 Crash, then austerity, then the AI Crash...

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TOUR GUIDE:
...and by the end of the room it's just full-on fash. 

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CHILD IN TOUR GROUP [gesturing to the tapestry]:
What's this middle bit?

TOUR GUIDE:
This is the 2026 Battle of Legitimate Concerns 

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TOUR GUIDE:
[show a reporter standing next to the Dover protests]
Here's the media saying the government have got to do something about the legitimate concerns...

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CHILD:
...About the failure of capitalism?

TOUR GUIDE:
No about brown people on boats

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CHILD:
[pointing at boats crossing the sea on the tapestry]
Are these boats the mega-dinghies?

TOUR GUIDE:
Not all of them

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[we see one of the boats  is a giant yacht]
TOUR GUIDE:
That one's a superyacht,
carrying money from the American fascists to the British ones.

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TOUR GUIDE:
You see really it's as much a story of convergence as it is of conflict.

[An alarm sounds in the museum]
DING DING DING DING 

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TOUR GUIDE:
Ok, tour over everyone 

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TOUR GUIDE:
It's time for the Two Minute Hate!

[They all leave the museum]

[ends]
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Nash @radiodeadair.com · 20/09/2026
So Netflix is using "AI" to upscale old movies and shows, with obvious results. Using an algorithm to upscale old video isn't a terrible thing, but to do it right you need to have someone willing to go over every frame. Trouble is, dipshits think it's magic.
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David Smith @avaragado.org · 20/09/2026
These posts will continue until someone dies.
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David Smith @avaragado.org · 19/09/2026
Today: Trump announces an "AI force" and will anoint an "AI czar" Given that he destroys everything he touches, I guess the bubble's about to pop.
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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
every day of my life I think about the people using “she” to describe this computer program who still need to be convinced to use it for trans women
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Anil Dash @anildash.com · 17/09/2026
David Heinemeier Hansson called for the extermination of Romani people, comparing them to animals. An entire roster of tech tycoons responded by each personally giving him $1 million for his open source software project, even though he’s already wealthy enough to have a personal race car team.
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Small Robots @smolrobots.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Hard to imagine a more emblematic fracturing of the British social order than people turning on the lifeboats, the most conservative-coded, traditional charity we have. If these scumbags will attack the RNLI, they'll attack anyone or anything. Absolutely feral.
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David Smith @avaragado.org · 18/09/2026
Oh yes, that'll help. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
UK's 'dismal' Eurovision song choices to be examined by MPs
It comes after the UK's entry Look Mum No Computer came last in May's final, scoring just one point.
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David Smith @avaragado.org · 17/09/2026
KiNDA #DoctorWhoTender
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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I remember outrage about Just Stop Oil blocking a street, just in case an ambulance had to drive down it. Not because an ambulance was prevented from doing so, you understand. Just the abstract idea that one might have to.
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David Smith @avaragado.org · 17/09/2026
We’ve held a village referendum
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David Smith @avaragado.org · 17/09/2026
AI man: it's seeding a new silicon species BBC: *transcribes gullibly* Man: … with hydroplastic knees BBC: *scribbles* Man: … and underthermal marshmallow bags BBC: *nods pensively* Man: … and eight-pointed manticules BBC: *taps pen on chin* Man: … BBC: And what do they think about immigration?
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David Smith @avaragado.org · 17/09/2026
Can someone wake up the ~1 journalist in BBC News with a science degree and ask them to remind their colleagues that CLIMATE AND WEATHER ARE DIFFERENT. Lead story in the Climate section: "getting a bit parky innit" Much farther down: "Climate change played role in Nepal-Tibet flood, study finds"
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Raquel 🌈✨ @aistear.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Blumineck lo ha vuelto a hacer 🥹 le aplaudo hasta que se me caigan las manos, bravo. "Be masculine, be feminine, be neither, or be both. But be kind."
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Mike Smith @blogshank.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Very pleased to have been an early reader for this novel, which has now been published. I’m a sucker for weird and wonderful sci-fi written in a future dialect.
Cover of Between Two Worlds by Anthony Camber
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David Smith @avaragado.org · 15/09/2026
Maybe it'll be taken over by WHSmith.
A photo of the newly closed TGJones store in Cambridge with the T, J and s poorly photoshopped (using Affinity) to grey, so the sign reads "Gone". I am very funny.
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David Smith @avaragado.org · 14/09/2026
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Roger @rogger.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
My copy of @anthonycamber.com's new novel Between Two Worlds showed up! One for the SF folks. YA-ish queer romance on a far future generational colony starship with more than a hint of creeping dystopia, and a really interesting idiom.
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Jess Miers 🦝 @jmiers230.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
I did a somewhat deep dive into the recent OpenAI and Anthropic "hacks" for an upcoming interview. IMO, the AI companies are better off running with the "rogue AI" story because the real story is actually pretty embarrassing. Like making your Wi-Fi password "wifi" embarrassing. 🧵
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David Smith @avaragado.org · 13/09/2026
Things I was frightened of as a child: (not shown: my bedroom wallpaper)
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Jess O'Thomson @jessothomson.co.uk · 12/09/2026
To be clear – I would argue this is almost certainly unlawful discrimination under the Equality Act 2010, even under the Code of Practice.
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Ricardo Autobahn @ricardoautobahn.co.uk · 12/09/2026
Good lord exactly what everybody said would happen happened
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Ian Boudreau @ianboudreau.com · 12/09/2026
"don't you care about fairness in sports?" No actually, I don't. Nobody does
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flyingrodent @flyingrodent.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
An entire politics and worldview animated by a lively terror that somewhere, somebody might be eating a free cheese sandwich
Sharron Davies HoL MBE O
@sharrond62
x.com
Accept they're not free really are they? The cost the tax payer, when giving children a breakfast can be achieved for 50p at home. The cost to the tax payer is far far higher per breakfast than
50p
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David Smith @avaragado.org · 10/09/2026
The US public should demand half up-front or no deal, like anyone selling anything to a serial non-payer and multiple bankrupt.
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Anil Dash @anildash.com · 09/09/2026
There are a lot of people who think their parents got their brains destroyed by Fox News, but somehow they’re not getting their brains destroyed by staying on Twitter.
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John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 09/09/2026
Also, why is this basically written up as "quirky crowd make an embarrassing mistake" and not "violent racists form mob because Asian people use hotel"?
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Emily✨ @emilyoram.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
I suspect Ed Miliband isn't a 'real Jew' until it's time to draw a political cartoon of him...
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James Ball @jamesrball.com · 07/09/2026
If every statement about Extinction Rebellion had opened with "Climate change is the single biggest issue facing humanity, and we understand why people have legitimate concerns the world isn't doing enough to tackle it…" this approach might be *faintly* defensible. But they didn't, and it isn't.
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Chris Terry-Enescu @cjterry.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Truly wild to have lived through moral panics about teenagers wearing hoodies and Muslim women wearing the head dress to now experience 'but is a large group of organised far right activists in balaclavas really that scary'
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David Smith @avaragado.org · 08/09/2026
It’s only a couple of days since Farage and Reform were caught red-handed trying to break election law and then lying about it, and it’s already disappeared.
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